Tamara Vasilyevna Titova (née Cherkas) was born in the town of Svatove, Luhansk Region, Ukraine, on December 25, 1937. Her birth mother died before Tamara turned one year old, and the girl was brought up by her father’s second wife Ksenia Silovna.

After eight years at school, Tamara moved in with her sister Lidiya in the town of Pushkin where she took up a job with the dining hall for pilots. Legend has it that once, she went dancing at the town hall where a handsome young officer pilot accidentally stepped on her foot. That officer was Gherman Titov. After half a year of dating, he proposed.

In an interview, Tamara Titova reminisced about the time when she and her future husband went looking for a place to apply for a marriage license,

The commanders of Gherman Titov’s regiment provided the newlyweds with an 11-square meter room in an apartment. Tamara Titova made every effort to make her husband’s service go smoothly, keeping track of his daily flights and the selection of pilots for a mysterious test unit. When Gherman Titov left to undergo specialized training, he wrote daily to his wife.

For Tamara Titova, her husband’s journey into space did not come as a complete surprise. Long before that, she had started noticing books by Tsiolkovsky and Kondratyuk and other available publications on space at their apartment. However, the couple did not discuss the matter openly. When Titov went to Baikonur in July 1961, he said to his wife,

On August 6, the Vostok 2 spacecraft was launched that carried the cosmonaut Gherman Titov into space. Tamara Titova spent 25 hours and 18 minutes anxiously listening to the radio. However, she later recalled never doubting that everything would turn out alright. On August 7, the Vostok 2 capsule landed in Saratov Region. The space mission ended successfully.

Titov brought home a postcard that he signed for his wife aboard his space capsule,